The ideal digital camera?

[Jeremy Z]

Wow, good post. I'm a mechanical person myself. I prefer mechanical, 35mm cameras. I feel more connected to it.

Mine is an Olympus OM1n. Just the most beautiful shutter sound around, IMO. I can see all the gears turning in my mind's eye. Turning mechanical rings for aperture and shutter speed, and knowing right where it is without ever looking... It is just great. I have to say I prefer the shutter speed dial of the Nikon, Pentax, and Canon over the other lens ring on the Olympi, but it is nothing to complain about really.

I think you should keep shooting 35mm. Have the negs scanned as they're processed, and get the best of both worlds.

As nice as it is to do imaging on the pc, it is just not theraputic like working in a darkroom. You can see things happening, you're working with your hands. The cameras and enlargers have these nice mechanical moving parts. It's just magical.

To someone who has to sit in front of a computer all day at work, I don't really look forward to it as much when I get home.

Yet, I'm still going digital. It is just too convenient to ignore forever, like cell phones. But I'm jolly well going to keep that OM1n around, and put a roll through it from time to time, to remind me what photography really used to be like.

 

[Remi M.]

I think there is allot of room for improvement.

How about greater dynamic range? If our eye can do it, I don't see why a sensor one day couldn't. I think 32bit HDR in camera photography is just a matter of better sensors and algorithms.

I would love to have a camera with higher fps. It would make shots like this:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/82/208789623_19c369d9a1_b.jpg
allot easier to make.

Bigger, higher resolution and higher contrast ratio LCD (or other type) of screens would be great. I can only imagine a screen the size of the whole back of the camera with touchscreen buttons.

In camera panoramic photo stitching.

High speed Wifi file transfer.

Or how about a 80gig mini hard drive in the camera. If a Ipod can have a 80gig hard drive, why can't DSLR's have them?

A viewfinder that would actually let me reliably use manual focus (for macro photography)

ISO 3200 with NO noise.

Ultra deep depth of field. Made with in camera compiling of several different shots at different focus ranges.



I think DSLR's were about being as good as film, It's time to image where photography could go without comparing it to film.